Lives in Cricket No 25 - Tom Richardson

86 However, matters improved after that and a season’s best of seven for 53 against Somerset and seven for 63 against Middlesex accelerated the wickets total to 100 by the end of August and 106 in the season. He was still capable of bowling through an innings, indeed through both, and in the 291-run win against Lancashire at The Oval, he and Lockwood, but for two overs by Brockwell, would have bowled unchanged through the match. It was a bit of hard luck that Lockwood and Richardson should have by a mere accident missed last Saturday a distinction which does not fall to many bowlers in the course of a year of keeping up their ends unchanged during the two innings of a first-class game. Surrey’s first two bowlers practically did this in the Lancashire match at the Oval at the end of the week. Lockwood, who had made a lot of runs in the first innings of Surrey, had rubbed one of his toes badly while batting, and had to consult a doctor with regard to its treatment between the innings, fearing that he might be prevented from continuing the game. As he had to have his foot attended to, a substitute had to take his place in the field for a few minutes. In his absence Brockwell had bowled two overs which he would not otherwise have done. 203 It was about this time that Wilfred Rhodes took his 1,000 th wicket in first-class cricket in his fifth season. Ashley-Cooper drew the inevitable comparison with Richardson’s 1005 in his golden era of 1894/97. Rhodes’ 1005 had cost 14,891 runs, Richardson’s 14,154. Not a lot of difference, but Rhodes was – or was to become – an allrounder. Richardson never had any such pretensions. In the match against Oxford University he reached 1,900 wickets and 3,000 runs, but he still had some pace, causing H.J.Wyld to retire hurt with a split finger. At The Oval, the knives were out. He was no longer the effective match- winning, at times unplayable, bowler, of the 1890s. He was now disposable and the Committee sought to reduce his winter pay from £100 to £50. Though in terms of his value to the club this was a sensible and pragmatic decision, Richardson saw it as a breach of faith which, in terms of the 1895 agreement, it probably was. That 1895 agreement had referred only to an ‘intention’ to renew and there was now little prospect of its being continued at that level in subsequent winters. On a legal nicety the Club might have argued that an intention is not an obligation and in a case involving an unrepresented Richardson on one side and Lord Alverstone, President of the Club and Lord Chief Justice of England on the other, there would have been only one winner. Eventually the Club fulfilled the moral obligation to restore the £100 but not without a bit of vigorous negotiating ping-pong: It was decided that Richardson should have notice that the arrangement with him on Aug 1 1895 and continued for a year on Sept 17 1901 would be discontinued. The question of any arrangement with 203 Cricket 21 August 1902 The Twilight’s Last Gleaming